A bhava is a house of the birth chart: one of twelve fields of life, counted from the rising sign, the lagna. Where a rashi tells you how something expresses itself and a graha tells you what is acting, the bhava tells you where in life it happens.
Whole-sign houses and bhava chalit
In the Parashari tradition the simplest and most widely used method is the whole-sign house. The sign rising at birth becomes the entire first house, the next sign the second house, and so on round the zodiac. If you were born with Leo rising, all of Leo is your first house, all of Virgo your second, and Cancer your twelfth. Our free kundli uses this method for the main chart, calculated in the sidereal zodiac with Lahiri ayanamsa.
The bhava chalit chart is a refinement shown separately. It takes the exact degree of the ascendant as the middle of the first house and divides the sky between the ascendant and the midheaven into unequal houses (a Sripati-style division, close to Porphyry in the West). A planet at the very end or very start of a sign can then fall into the neighbouring house. Astrologers differ on how much weight to give this: many read the whole-sign chart first and use chalit to fine-tune which house a borderline planet actually delivers results for.
The twelve houses
| House | Classical name | Main themes |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Tanu | Self, body, temperament |
| 2nd | Dhana | Family, wealth, speech |
| 3rd | Sahaja | Siblings, courage, effort |
| 4th | Sukha | Mother, home, contentment |
| 5th | Putra | Children, intelligence, merit |
| 6th | Ari | Obstacles, debts, service |
| 7th | Yuvati | Spouse, partnerships |
| 8th | Randhra | Longevity, hidden matters |
| 9th | Dharma | Fortune, father, teachers |
| 10th | Karma | Career, status |
| 11th | Labha | Gains, friends, hopes |
| 12th | Vyaya | Expenses, foreign lands, release |
House groups
The classical texts sort houses into overlapping groups, and a house's group says a lot about how its lord behaves.
- Kendra (1, 4, 7, 10). The angles, the pillars of the chart. Planets here are strong and visible. See kendra.
- Trikona (1, 5, 9). The trines, houses of dharma and grace. Their lords are counted as the most auspicious in any chart. See trikona.
- Dusthana (6, 8, 12). The houses of difficulty: conflict, upheaval, loss. They are also where people build resilience, depth and detachment. See dusthana.
- Upachaya (3, 6, 10, 11). Houses that grow with time and effort. Natural malefics often do well here.
- Maraka (2, 7). The "killing" houses in the old longevity calculations. Today they are read mainly in dasha timing, not as predictions on their own.
The first house is both a kendra and a trikona, which is why the lagna and its lord (the lagnesh) carry so much weight. When the lord of a kendra and the lord of a trikona join or aspect each other, tradition speaks of a raja yoga.
The four purusharthas
The houses also cycle through the four aims of life. Houses 1, 5 and 9 are dharma (purpose), 2, 6 and 10 are artha (livelihood), 3, 7 and 11 are kama (desire and relationships), and 4, 8 and 12 are moksha (release). Reading a chart through these triads shows where a person's energy naturally flows.
House lords
Every house is ruled by the lord of the sign that occupies it. With Leo rising, the Sun rules the first house, Mercury the second (Virgo), Venus the third (Libra), and so on. The lord carries the house's affairs wherever it sits: a fifth lord in the tenth links children or learning with career; a tenth lord in the twelfth may tie work to foreign places or behind-the-scenes roles. Much of Vedic reading is simply following house lords around the chart.
Each house also has a natural karaka, a planet that signifies its themes in every chart. The Sun is karaka of the first house, Jupiter of the second and fifth, Mars of the third, the Moon of the fourth. When the house, its lord and its karaka all tell the same story, the reading is strong.
Reading from the lagna and from the Moon
The houses are counted from the lagna for the body and outer events. Tradition also asks you to count them again from the Moon (Chandra lagna), which shows the mind's experience of those same areas; that is how the Moon-sign rashifal and the sade sati are worked out. Where both readings agree, the result is more reliable.
No single house decides a life. A house is read with its lord, its karaka, the aspects on it, the running dasha and the rest of the kundli together. For a step-by-step walk-through, see how to read your kundli, or browse the grahas and rashis that fill these houses.